Trump halts stripping visas from foreign students flagged in crime database

WASHINGTON — The Trump management revealed Friday it would extremity terminating visas for hundreds of overseas students pinch moreover insignificant criminal backgrounds — astatine slightest for now.

In a national tribunal proceeding successful Washington, DC, a Justice Department lawyer announced nan displacement would beryllium impermanent arsenic Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) develops a caller argumentation to emblem foreigners taxable to deportation who are besides studying nether nan F-1 visa regime, The New York Times reported.

Until then, nary overseas clever clever will person their visa rescinded “solely based” connected accusation successful nan National Crime Information Center, DC adjunct US lawyer Joseph Carilli said successful a written connection publication retired successful court.

Hundreds of others who already had their visas canceled — whether their offenses were insignificant infractions for illustration postulation violations aliases had been dismissed — will person them reactivated, Carilli besides said.

ICE will still activity to deport different overseas students who prosecute successful unlawful activity — including anti-Israel demonstrators connected field who person advocated for US-designated panic groups aliases who different airs a threat to nationalist security.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has declared location will beryllium “zero tolerance” for specified overseas visitors, students aliases otherwise, including Columbia University postgraduate student Mahmoud Khalil who led protests that harassed and intimidated Jewish students — and were endorsed by Hamas.

More than 1,500 overseas students were taxable to visa revocations — but galore sued alleging that they had not been convicted of convulsive crimes and frankincense had not violated nan position of their visas, according to a New York Times analysis.

The American Immigration Lawyers Association, however, said that since President Trump took agency Jan. 20, nan full number of records removed from ICE’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) had topped 4,700.

“ICE maintains nan authority to terminate a SEVIS grounds for different reasons, specified arsenic if nan plaintiff fails to support his aliases her nonimmigrant position aft nan grounds is reactivated aliases engages successful different unlawful activity that would render him aliases her removable from nan United States nether nan Immigration and Nationality Act,” Carilli added successful his statement, per Politico.

There are astir 1.1 cardinal F-1 visa holders presently successful nan US, per Reuters, which noted that national prosecutors besides announced nan argumentation reversal during a abstracted proceeding successful Boston national court.

The Justice Department made nan about-face aft being deed pinch dozens of lawsuits and yet restraining orders by national judges who ruled against nan aviator program.

Reps for ICE, nan State Department and DOJ did not instantly respond to requests for comment.